afterglow
by bicpencils
Summary: there's a strange feeling that he gets every time he wakes up like this. an aftermath that Ryou Bakura is all too well accustomed to.


**A/N**: The life and times of Ryou Bakura, host to a powerful spirit. And it's even less interesting than it sounds.

Set in the early manga!

* * *

As one Bakura fell asleep, another woke up.

"Where – oh, _hell_."

At this point, Ryou was absolutely tired of waking up in his bedroom like this. He was, of course, used to waking up in his bedroom, but there was a certain feeling that he got. The kind where he'd felt to have just slept for ten hours while somehow still being exhausted. It told him that he'd been possessed at some point, for some reason, and he wondered with annoyance who the new victim was. The new school bully? The kid down the block that threw an off-handed and generally forgivable taunt at him in a way that might have for some reason struck a nerve in the spirit? Or how about an entirely different, unsuspecting target? One of Ryou's new friends? Whoever it was, Ryou couldn't help but feel a twinge of sorrow, though most of that feeling had long faded over the years.

It was kind of like the feeling he'd get when he ran over a cat by accident. It wasn't _really_ his fault, but he felt somewhat responsible. Not to the point of taking the blame for something so horrible, but to the point of being curious and worried about exactly what had happened. And a little fascinated. Well, okay, very fascinated, but that wasn't much of a surprise, considering his interest in dark concepts and occult rituals. His deck reflected that enough.

Really, he wouldn't even have minded the whole borrowing of his body if not for a handful of reasons.

The first was, of course, that he'd injured people in his "sleep." And Ryou was never much of a violent person, he would admit, no matter how much he'd like to be on certain occasions. Ryou wouldn't usually hurt people. Mostly due to his physical inability to hurt people. He nearly never let his anger get the better of him, and so he nearly never had the capacity or patience for consequences in the long run to physically or mentally harm someone. The way he saw it, anger was a crutch that many people used - a high that would only temporarily work until the person in question would submit to fatigue. It didn't help that he wasn't particularly strong, either.

Which brought him to his next point. He rolled his arm in pain, unsure of what might have caused what felt suspiciously like a small amount of bleeding around his forearm. He didn't care enough to look down.

The second reason was that Ryou himself was regularly injured. He was lucky if he woke up with back pains, really. Hell, he once woke up with a knife in his shoulder. Never anything that would immediately threaten his life, though. He almost thought the spirit would eventually get him killed. Almost. It wasn't even that he suspected that the spirit cared for his life, no, it cared for its own life. It cared _about_ Ryou's life, he would admit, and rightfully so. If he died, they both died. Sort of. The spirit would no longer have a host. Which was the same thing basically.

He eventually told his friend, Yugi, about this epiphany.

"_Hey, why don't I just kill myself? It would do the both of us good!"_

He was joking, of course, and he was even smiling as he said so, but Yugi didn't seem to find it funny. Not a lot of people appreciated his humor.

Thirdly, would it kill the spirit to eat every once in a while?

His stomach growled and he knew it had to have been hours since he'd last been in control. Did the spirit just not feel hunger? Really, at this point, Ryou was contemplating that it was starving him on purpose, but he reminded himself not to jump to conclusions. Then again, with another person inside you that could take control at any moment, it was hard not to. He felt as though he could consume an elephant. Or a house. And suddenly he had an overwhelming feeling of emotional emptiness and worry about what the spirit could possibly have done in such a long amount of time.

The fourth reason was that he couldn't speak with the spirit in the slightest.

He was sure that it could see while he was in control, and yet Ryou himself couldn't even have any slight amount of consciousness when the spirit was in control. He couldn't talk to the spirit. He could barely take any amount of control back when he really needed to or tried to. There was no way that they could speak to each other, despite the brief moments of the strange taunting in his ear that he was sure he'd heard before. And he was sure that his thoughts could be heard, which sent him into a state of paranoia on more than one occasion.

And it's a little awkward when his friends call both him and the spirit by his last name. It shouldn't have bothered him, since they didn't have anything else to call it (Ryou was fairly sure it didn't remember its name and, hell, even if it did, it wasn't like it would tell them), but it almost made him feel as though they saw the two of them as two sides of the same person. Which was far from the truth.

Thinking back, he remembered that Yugi was interested in the motives of the spirit inside of Ryou. But it wasn't like he could tell him anything. Not its motives or its views or its voice. Well, the voice sounded like him, but deeper, which in a way made sense, so he _could_ tell him that, but still. Yugi wanted to know everything about the spirit, but it wasn't like Ryou could give him its biography. He wanted to know the motives, the plans, and their relationship.

Their relationship? How could Ryou describe a relationship that he'd had with someone he'd never even met?

Sure, they'd had indirect communication, but it wasn't anything worth calling a conversation. As a result, Ryou knew nothing about the spirit and had no way of figuring anything out about it. Again, he was useless. He closed his eyes, succumbing to the familiar feeling of hopelessness. He was powerless; the spirit clearly was able to control him better than he could control himself. He could complain, but couldn't do anything about it. That was how it always was. That was likely how it always would be until someone else fixed the problem or it got out of hand. Those were always the only two options.

Oh, well.

He was awake. He might as well do something productive. Slowly rising, he put himself to the task of setting up a roleplaying game session for the rest of the night. It wasn't like it would be the first time he'd come to school tired.


End file.
